Pascale, Melbourne Review

Pascale Bar & Grill gets points just for being what it is: a
glamorous upscale hotel restaurant and bar with aspirations of
being a legitimate player on the city's dining scene.

Melbourne's high-end hotel dining rooms mostly play it safe with
risk-free menus, steep prices and a deathless addiction to buffets
ensuring that the demographic skews distinctly to in-house guest.
Not so at QT Melbourne's flagship diner, where the hotel
group's signature decorative razzle-dazzle combines with
well-sourced local produce, contemporary technique and an
accessible (if at times bonkers) food style to make it as much a
draw for those without a room key as those spending the night.

Neon sculptures at
entrance.

The bonkers end of Pascale's spectrum arrives in a variety of
forms but a dessert called Rustic Chocolate Stove best represents
the freewheeling approach. Stove? As it turns out, it's exactly
that, an old-timey looking miniature stove complete with splashback
and burners all made from Callebaut couverture. A velvet praline
cake covered in lacquered chocolate makes up the bulk of the stove,
and the three tiny saucepans on it are filled with different sauces
(caramel, raspberry and chocolate ganache) but otherwise it's a
scale model all-chocolate cooking appliance.

Why there's a stove made out of chocolate on the menu is hard to
say. But by the time it lands, you'll have already gleaned that
measured, coherent culinary messages are not what Pascale is
about.

The entrance is something of a giveaway, a flight of
electric-blue carpeted stairs rising from a hotel lobby that's
jittery with constantly looping video art. You pass sculptures made
from neon and towering stacks of trashy paperbacks and a stuffed
peacock, arriving at the top with the grill and open kitchen
backdrop, and glassed-in "pastry cube" to the right and the bar,
complete with free-standing wine cellar and, often, a head-bobbing
DJ to the left.

Pascale feature
wall.

Even without the beats Pascale has a nightclub vibe, an
exuberantly gaudy-glam sheen. It's a refreshing approach in a town
where tastefully low-key is considered the default setting. You can
have fun here, it says. Let your hair down.

It's imperative, given that this is an upscale hotel dining
experience, that you head for pre-dinner drinks in the lounge where
young women in chic cocktail dresses circle the large central bar
bearing trays of drinks. The lighting is suitably dim, the music a
small step back from intrusive and the multitude of seating options
- bar stools, raised communal tables, small round tables, low-slung
leather banquettes, high-backed armchairs huddled together over
tiny tables in darkened corners - give the place an attractively
clandestine air.

The cocktails are reasonably well constructed and the list runs
to retro classics such as the Grasshopper alongside a page of
signature drinks that include a G&T with an elderflower and
quinine syrup and sparkling cucumber water, and an Espresso Martini
that throws chestnut liqueur, shaved chestnuts and chocolate walnut
bitters in the mix.

There's a list of bar snacks, too, and it's here that the
enthusiastic stylings of the QT group's creative food director
Robert Marchetti (formerly Maurice Terzini's collaborator in the
kitchen at Giuseppe, Arnaldo & Sons in Melbourne and Sydney's
Icebergs and North Bondi Italian Food), and
executive chef Paul Easson (an alumnus of Melbourne's Rockpool Bar & Grill who headed the
kitchen at QT Sydney's Gowings) make their love of flavour very
clear.

Onion rings are crumbed in polenta, fried and served with a
super-salty squid-ink mayonnaise. Thai-flavoured minced pork is
studded with green chillies and served on fried bread with a fiery
sambal. Bao are stuffed with fried chicken, hot sauce, American
cheese and kimchi.

"Subtle" is not the word. Neither is "restraint". But who's
looking for subtle in a place where the wallpaper is patterned with
saucy black-and-white illustrations, and the arrangement of red
roses in the centre of dining room is big enough to have emptied a
couple of greenhouses? The more-is-more theme continues in the
restaurant: leather and brass furniture, brass-topped tables,
candles, mirrors and thick, patterned carpets laid over a
dark-stained timber floor.

Then you're handed a menu of nearly 50 dishes.

Why have three wood-fired steaks when you could have six? Potato
sides? There are four: twicecooked chips, French fries, Paris mash,
salt-baked sweet potato. The line between generous and overwhelming
is a tricky one, but mostly Pascale hews to the right side.

That said, it's not just the carte that's busy; there's a lot
happening on the plate as well.

There are obvious reasons to yell "stop" here. The quality of
the central ingredients might allow them to hold their own under
the considerable onslaught of sugar, chilli or vinegar, and the
play of soft and crunchy textures is appealing but these dishes
strain under the overload.

Dining room.

A veal and ox tartare is more relaxed, the handchopped meat
teamed with grilled enoki mushrooms, an organic egg, and sherry
dressing. Mashing its Gruyère crisp garnish brings a sharp salty
richness to the lush meat, adding complexity while maintaining
balance.

Crackingly fresh Mooloolaba prawns, split down the middle and
grilled over wood, are mostly left to fend for themselves beside an
undressed mint and shallot salad and garlicky lemon mayo, while
polentacrusted spanner crab cakes, made pleasantly salty with a
little pancetta, are pan-fried and served with avocado and fresh
lime mousse and slivers of celery heart.

There's more relative simplicity with wood-grilled long-bone
Flinders Island lamb chops. The meat, naturally salty and firm of
texture, comes with a tangy orange and mint pistou. It's good,
uncomplicated, solidly cooked stuff, as is the whole flounder,
grilled and served with a Champagne, lemon and parsley sauce.

These simpler dishes are a better fit with the service at
Pascale which, early days in, is unfailingly pleasant but often a
bit green and gormless. But with charming manager Marie Gallien
(from QT Sydney) on board, the odds of efficient and knowledgeable
entering the equation are good.

"Pleasant" also describes the wine list. It's a serviceable
collection with crowdpleasing choices by the glass - Pieropan
soave, Crawford River Young Vines riesling, Spinifex rosé, Torbreck
shiraz viognier -and decent premier cru Burgundy, but itreads as
timid in a room as exuberant as this. No one expects the boat to be
pushed out too far in this kind of setting, but some pushing past
familiarity and comfort would be welcome.

Still, with this menu a calming bottle of familiarity is perhaps
all that's needed.

It'd go well with clam "carbonara", a ridiculously rich dish of
house-made pasta with a cream and riesling sauce, Western
Australian clams, Avruga, bottarga, shallots and hijiki all
jostling - some might say brawling - for attention.

Sichuan fried duck.

Sichuan fried duck is better: juicy Maryland steamed, dried
overnight, doused in hoisin sauce and fried crisp. It arrives at
the table chopped up ready to be stuffed into well-made steamed bao
with an array of condiments including pickled cucumber, Sichuan
salt and more hoisin. Juicy, salty, sweet, soft and crunchy, it's
an easy-eating dish that fully delivers on the roll-your-sleeves-up
promise.

For those not up to the surreal stove moment at the end of the
meal there's other sweet stuff to be had that's less puzzling.

Bird's Milk is the Pascale version of floating islands, the
meringue sitting on raspberry and caramel in an anglaise made with
salty-sweet camel milk. (Yes, camel milk.) The whole thing is
served in a glass bowl under a lid of tempered white chocolate and,
despite the numerous elements, it knits together well - somehow
subtle and not too sugary.

The Rooftop Choc-Honey Box is back into sculpture territory,
with a combination of honeycomb and honey from QT's hives in Sydney
and Canberra, and pistachio, nougat and almond biscuits all
contained in a carefully constructed white chocolate cube with a
honeycomb design printed on each side. Again, avoiding the overly
sugary, the box keeps texture front and centre.

Bird's Milk.

Just as QT Melbourne has filled a gap in Melbourne's upscale
hotel scene, Pascale Bar & Grill provides a dining experience
unlike any other in the city. Though the ingredient overload in
many dishes can get exhausting, there are simpler choices - oysters
and steak, for instance, or a burger and chips - so the lengthy
menu provides options, including a daily à la carte breakfast. But
this isn't a place just about the food. The glamorous setting, the
greeting and farewelling by well-groomed staff, the money splashed
on art and the scale of the room make coming here feel like an
event. It's flashy and kind of silly at times, but it's never dull
and there's nothing wrong with that.